The present invention relates in general to video display systems, and more particularly to the construction of a large video display unit capable of supporting user interaction.
Video walls are being used ever more frequently for displaying visual data on a large physical space. It is known in the art to mount a plurality of television monitors on a vertical surface in a rectangular grid and to control the video signal shown on each monitor for presenting different visual messages. The resulting display is more than just the sum of the outputs of each unit as the units can be combined logically into one large display, or subdivided at will. The use of standard replicated components allows for an inexpensive, flexible video display according to this known prior art.
The current technology is limited by (i) the large depth required by the video wall as each individual monitor requires a video tube in order to display the signal, (ii) the need for a centralized control of the display, and (iii) the lack of a natural input mechanism in order to interact with the display. These limitations restrict the use of video walls to one-way communication devices that simply show the information visually and do not provide for user interaction.
The present invention addresses these prior art restrictions while losing none of the advantages of well known video wall technology. In addition, according to an aspect of the present invention there is provided a large-scale video display in which (i) the depth of the video display is reduced to less than an inch, (ii) the control of the display is inherently distributed allowing for much more sophisticated control of the images presented, and (iii) direct, complex user interaction is possible with the information on the display. The resulting device can be mounted on any surface, in any orientation in space, including desktops.